Posted by s.hettrick on 29 August 2014 - 2:41pm

Following this year's Research Software Engineers' AGM, we will be running a hackday on mental health with the help of our main sponsor Maudsley Digital. If you want to work with some excellent developers on something that could understand, diagnose or simply help with mental health issues, then register for our hackday.

Research Software Engineers (RSEs) are the people behind research software. They work in academia and use their expertise combined with an understanding of research to create the software that researchers rely on. Although fundamental to research, RSEs lack recognition and reward, so we've been campaigning to help academia to understand the importance of RSEs to research.

We're not just looking for RSEs to attend the hackday. Anyone with an interest in mental health, the use of data in research, data visualisation or just in working with interesting people on a noble cause, should attend.

We wanted to get people working together, so we're going to run a hackday in association with the AGM. Our main sponsor, Maudsley Digital is interested in using activity data to better understand mental health issues (and thanks to Fitbit UK, we have Fitbits and Fitbit data to hack with - and to give away as prizes). Although we will focus on using activity data during the hackday, we also welcome other ideas for hacks within the field of mental health.

We want the software developed during the hackday to be open and available for researchers and clinicians to use, so we will ask for it to be uploaded to Github. Compute and data resources come courtesy of Microsoft Research, who are also providing tablets as prizes for the hackday. If you're unsure about cloud resources, then both Microsoft Research and Google will be presenting at the AGM on the use of cloud in research.

Over the coming week, ideas for the hacks will be posted on the RSE website - so keep an eye out for the latest developments. If you'd like to attend the AGM, the hackday or both, then please register now. If you have any questions, please get in touch.